The present invention generally relates to the presentation of images and text in a graphical user interface (GUI) and more specifically to the instant display of a GUI in a style selected by the user.
Current software applications offer consumers many opportunities to improve the quality of user experience by allowing them to customize different aspects of computer programs. Particularly, users are able to personalize the appearance of a GUI by choosing various display preferences. For example, a user of an email application can choose to view detailed information of each email message, such as sender, time, subject, attachment, priority information, or the same user can choose to see only the sender of each email message. Analogously, a user of an online search program can choose to view a GUI in the German language, or the same user can choose to read information in Japanese. Some software programs allow consumers to see GUIs in particular colors by selecting color schemes. These user-friendly options provide consumers an excellent opportunity to personalize their interaction with the software program and to ensure that the users' visual experience meets their business and personal needs.
While existing software programs attempt to provide a high level of versatility and convenience in the user experience, they still confront some troubling obstacles in achieving complete customer satisfaction.
First of all, existing software applications do not allow a user to compile a list of preferred display styles. That is, a user cannot refer to an inventory of display styles that he/she might want to use at another time. Therefore, if a user has one set of display preferences for one GUI of a software application and a second set of different display preferences for a second GUI in the same application, the user must re-select each set of display criteria every time he/she views each GUI. Existing technology requires unnecessary time spent during each criteria selection; it also forces the user to memorize different sets of viewing preferences for different GUIs. As the number of GUIs increases with numerous software programs that a user encounters everyday, this can be a daunting task.
Secondly, existing software programs do not allow a user to easily switch between different display styles. In the above example, every time the user wants to switch to a different display style in a GUI, he/she must encounter the tedious process of a personalization dialogue, which often requires the user to go through multiple input and command windows before the user is able to see the GUI as desired. Repeating this process is time consuming and troublesome for the high-speed computing world of today.
The present invention overcomes the disadvantages of existing systems by allowing users to view a GUI in different display styles with one-click access, within the same level of the GUI. More specifically, in an exemplary embodiment, the present invention integrates an iView section in a navigation panel. The iView section offers a user a list of display styles, called “styleswitchers.” Each styleswitcher enables the user to see a GUI in a combination of viewing preferences previously selected and saved by the user. That is, the user easily transforms the appearance of an entire GUI to a different display style by clicking on an available styleswitcher in the iView section.